Knowledge Preservation Practices on Service Delivery at the Communications Authority of Kenya

Public institutions depend on preserved organizational knowledge to sustain reliable service delivery, yet many, including the Communications Authority of Kenya (CA), lose critical expertise through poor documentation, staff turnover, and fragmented record systems, risking slower response times and inconsistent client-facing services. This study evaluated how knowledge preservation practices influence service delivery at CA's Nairobi headquarters, guided by Nonaka and Takeuchi's Knowledge Spiral (SECI) Theory. It adopted a descriptive survey design and a quantitative approach, targeting all 72 staff comprising 12 management, 40 technical, and 20 administrative employees through a census. Data were collected using structured questionnaires administered via Google Forms and key informant interviews; 64 respondents participated, yielding an 88.89% response rate. Descriptive statistics, Pearson correlation, and regression analysis addressed the quantitative data, while thematic analysis addressed the interview data. Knowledge preservation had a strong, positive, and statistically significant effect on service delivery (Beta = 0.781, p = 0.000), explaining 63.5% of the variance (R² = 0.635). Staff rated ease of information retrieval, accuracy, and timeliness as the strongest aspects of knowledge preservation, and digitized preservation improved turnaround times, reduced duplication of client requests, strengthened complaint resolution, and built stakeholder trust. The study concluded that knowledge preservation, particularly accessible systems, accurate records, and regularly updated knowledge, significantly enhances service delivery, consistent with the Combination stage of the SECI Model. The study recommends that CA's Information and Communication Technology Directorate strengthen knowledge preservation by improving system accessibility, retrieval speed, and processing capacity, and by adding analytical tools for locating relevant past cases. The study's novel contribution lies in extending the SECI Model to a professional regulatory context, showing that the Combination stage of knowledge conversion, rather than tacit-to-tacit exchange, is decisive for service delivery outcomes in Kenyan public institutions.